The Blog

Jun 4, 2007

AS3 Cookbook Doesn't Disappoint

I had imagined that it would focus primarily on ActionScript 3 for Flex developers, but it's very much applicable to generic AS coding in Flash. The authors seemed to avoid Flex-specific stuff, which I think is incredibly wise considering how ubiquitous AS3 is likely to be in the coming years in all of Adobe's products. It did look like there were some chapters on remoting and some other items that mentioned the Flex framework, but even these chapters had sections on generic ActionScript items such as programming TCP sockets and invoking calls to a Flash Remoting gateway. The book was developed in conjunction with Adobe as part of their technical training series, and I imagine that the terseness and relevance of the material probably stems from this partnership.

I was particularly excited in the sections on drawing, animation, and filters. I've always wanted to make a bad ass GUI environment for doing something like drawing Gantt charts, or visualizing a flow in one of our process-centric software applications and allowing a user to manipulate it with the mouse.

I primarily purchased this book for two reasons: I learn best from books, and I learn best from sample code. The O'Reilly Cookbook series obviously fits very well with my way of learning, since they are all books packed with minimal fluff and loads of sample code relevant to a particular programming task.

I'd definitely recommend any budding ActionScript/Flash/Flex developers to pick this up. I'll be adding this book to the line up for our internal recommended reading list at CFI.